Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, Grady Gammage Auditorium sits on the campus of Arizona State University.  Although neither Wright nor Gammage lived to see the building constructed it was their partnership that brought the auditorium to life.  Originally designed as an opera house for Baghdad, Iraq, Wright adapted it to the campus of ASU as part of Gammage’s vision to create a university auditorium that stood out from all others.  It was Wright’s only public building in Arizona, the home of the western campus of his Taliesin School of Architecture.

The building reaches the height of an 8 story building and can seat over 3,000 people.  It has become Arizona State’s iconic structure with its prominent location at the intersections of Apache Blvd. and Mill Ave.  Today the auditorium plays host to everything from Broadway musicals to symphonic concerts to lectures and solo performances.

Above all else, Gammage Auditorium stands out to me because of its architecture, both exterior and interior.  From the repeated use of circles to the copper and pink tones that show their best in the setting sun this is a classic Wright design.

f/4.0 – 1/500 sec – ISO 400 – Focal Length 50 mm

I came up with a few more tips for photographing fireworks while shooting the fireworks show last night.

• Use manual focus rather than auto focus.  Set it once and then leave it alone.
• Don’t fuss with the aperture setting.  An f-stop in the neighborhood of 8.0 worked really well for me.  I set it and forget it.
• Leave your ISO pretty low.  I kept it on 100.
• Manage your exposure using the shutter speed.  If your camera has a bulb setting that is the ideal way to go.  Just remember that too long of an exposure will over expose.  It may be night, but fireworks give off a lot of light.

Scooter in a Bucket

Sometimes you just have to shoot an image at the moment it happens and you might not have time for 100% perfect preparation.  The depth of field is not ideal on this image in that the left side of his face is not in as sharp of focus as the right.  Also the moment presented itself when I did not have the flash unit on the camera.  So I adjusted the settings to get the right exposure even though I would have preferred to have used a flash.  But throwing out the “rules” to get a cute shot is not the end of the world.

Happy Fourth of July!